How to Use Backlight to Photograph Glassware

The awesome photography site Popular Photography has an ongoing article series called How To, in which photographers are interviewed about the different lighting techniques they use to achieve different effects.

The latest article highlights an ambitious shoot done by New York-based product photographer Taka Kawachi and how he used backlight to photograph glassware for a department store chain.

“For two solid weeks in 2012, Taka Kawachi, a product specialist who works out of a studio in Nyack, NY, shot nothing but glassware for a major department store chain,” writes Peter Kolonia. “Juice, highball, and shot glasses, tumblers, stemware of every size and shape, and, yes, pilsner glasses and beer mugs. If he wasn’t a master of lighting glass at the project’s outset, he certainly was by its end.”